Scandal

What is the scandal here? 

On Facebook, Fr. William Kuchinsky posted an article from the Washington Post* about his, Fr. Kuchinsky's, actions in obtaining, offering a requiem Mass for, and personally burying more than 100 "human fetuses" i.e. babies.

Kuchinsky, a West Virginia priest well known for his antiabortion activism, had been called to the apartment on March 28 by other antiabortion activists who said they had gotten the remains from the driver of a medical waste disposal truck in D.C. — an account the waste company denied. Lauren Handy, who rented the apartment, and Terrisa Bukovinac, another activist, had asked Kuchinsky to come, and he celebrated a funeral Mass.

Kuchinsky said he also agreed to take nearly all the fetuses, which the priest knew some would see as stolen and deeply disrespected, while others would call them rescued and honored.

***

Police last week would say only that the case remained “under active investigation.” Earlier this month, they said they were investigating the actions of activists as well as whether proper procedures were followed in disposal of the remains.

Everyone knows that if the remains of these little human beings had been incinerated in what our society considers, without much examination, to be the approved manner, not a murmur would be raised -- certainly no Washington Post articles are ever written about that subject.

This Post article isn't quite sure what to make of Fr. Kuchinsky and the activists who took the dead babies for burial (and as evidence of law breaking). Other pro-lifers have criticized Father for showing pictures of what he discovered in the containers. Recently I saw images of animals in nets on the sidewalk, presumably in Shanghai -- and the comments were full of anguish at the very thought of the inhumanity of it all, even though the same story also told of (but did not picture) infants torn from their mothers. 

The Post article's authors seem not to know what to make of the priest taking the remains to his kitchen so that he could prepare a service for them, nor are they sure what that service consists of. It seems clear to me that these reporters have come to a place -- the apartment where the activists took care of the remains, in fact -- where their preconceptions about "women's access to reproductive rights" don't stretch to cover or even cast a shadow over the facts; and the facts, which include 100 dead babies prayed over and buried, won't arrange themselves in a way that allows them to dismiss the priest as a wrong-doer, though they are evidently disposed to do so.

At first I thought this article expressed scandal over the activists' actions; on re-reading it, I find that there is something else there. I think of it as a sense of being completely surprised that anyone would take any of the steps the activists have taken, much less all of them. That surprise doesn't translate into a serious journalistic commitment to uncover the crimes of the abortion industry, but it is something different from what we usually see. Fr. Kuchinsky, Lauren Handy, and Terrisa Bukovinac have achieved something in bringing them to that point. 

And they have done the right thing in burying these poor dead. 

*The article in full:

After a secret funeral for fetal remains, a priest faced a choice

The Rev. William Kuchinsky says he decided to bury the fetuses in a private cemetery

By Michelle Boorstein, Today at 7:39 p.m. EDT

The Rev. William Kuchinsky celebrates a funeral Mass on March 28 in a D.C. apartment. (Courtesy of Kuchinsky)

The first time the Rev. William Kuchinsky performed a funeral Mass outside a parish, it was in the basement kitchen of a Capitol Hill rowhouse. He prayed over dozens of tiny blue circular, plastic containers.

They held more than 100 human fetuses, and the service was a secret.

Kuchinsky, a West Virginia priest well known for his antiabortion activism, had been called to the apartment on March 28 by other antiabortion activists who said they had gotten the remains from the driver of a medical waste disposal truck in D.C. — an account the waste company denied. Lauren Handy, who rented the apartment, and Terrisa Bukovinac, another activist, had asked Kuchinsky to come, and he celebrated a funeral Mass.

Kuchinsky said he also agreed to take nearly all the fetuses, which the priest knew some would see as stolen and deeply disrespected, while others would call them rescued and honored.

Over the next few days, those hidden interactions became national news. Handy was arrested by the FBI in a separate abortion-related case, and D.C. police retrieved five fetuses from her apartment. The activists said they had held on to the five larger fetuses, which they argue may have been from late-term abortions performed illegally, to turn them over to authorities. D.C. police have said the five fetuses appeared to have been aborted in accordance with city law.

Kuchinsky, 62, knew the activists’ actions would be seen as controversial, even among other abortion opponents. Still, he decided to bury the fetuses.

“The thought that came to me — and I’m not saying this is from the Lord — but the good Lord didn’t tell us, 'Bury people in Arlington’ or ‘Bury them overlooking a river with scenery,’” the Catholic cleric told The Washington Post. “He just said to bury the dead.”

He said he put the little containers in layers of dirt in a private cemetery of some people he knows well, he said. He won’t say where.

Handy and Bukovinac are part of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising group. Handy is among nine people who were indicted on federal charges for allegedly blockading the Washington Surgi-Clinic, an abortion provider in Foggy Bottom, in 2020. She has pleaded not guilty.

The women and several longtime antiabortion advocates, including Randall Terry, founder of the group Operation Rescue, later said they had procured remains of 115 fetuses on the sidewalk outside Surgi-Clinic from a driver carting away medical waste, whom they had asked for the remains.

In an April 5 statement, the Baltimore-based waste company, Curtis Bay, denied that any employees gave anything to the activists. “Any allegations made otherwise are false,” it said, adding that under company policy its employees are prohibited from transporting fetal remains.

Multiple requests for comment to Surgi-Clinic have gone unanswered. The clinic is one of a small number in the country that performs abortions later in pregnancies.

Handy, who is Catholic, told The Post that when they opened the box she knew she wanted a priest to come pray and to bury the remains. She said that she did not believe many priests would agree with her efforts but that she had met Kuchinsky years earlier when she was alone protesting and praying outside a D.C. clinic. She trusted him, so she called him.

When he learned about the fetal tissue, he said, he knew he would come right away.

“We were really in a dark place emotionally, and the idea he would come was such a nice thing,” Bukovinac said.

LifeSiteNews was the first to report on Kuchinsky’s involvement.

Nine people including Kuchinsky attended the basement Mass that Monday. Photos the priest provided to The Post showed him in his black-and-white vestments, a candle atop the refrigerator where the fetal remains were waiting and an open Bible on the kitchen table beside him.

Kuchinsky said he assumed the fetuses had not been baptized, and therefore — from the Catholic point of view — weren’t Christian. So he selected a Mass liturgy for children who die without being baptized. He had to tweak the wording, he said, because normally it addresses the parents’ loss as well.

“In my heart I remember the parents, but at the time the people gathered there were like adoptive parents,” he said.

The activists said they selected an intentionally diverse range of names for the 115 fetuses, and the names were read slowly during the Mass.

Sarah. Maria-Jose. Hadassah. Amir. Phoenix. Christopher X.

It felt very powerful to say the names, Handy said. She noted the group included Catholics, atheists “and some who lean anti-Catholic,” she said.

They sang a folk song Bukovinac wrote called “Pro Life Revolution,” which the women have also sung outside the D.C. medical examiner’s office since.

Two days later, Kuchinsky sunk the containers into the dirt, he said.

“The children needed to be buried,” he said. “I didn’t have time to get a box.”

Since the service and burial, the focus has shifted. Twenty-three Republicans in Congress sent a letter April 5 to D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and Police Chief Robert J. Contee III, calling for a “thorough investigation” of the timeline of the fetal lives and asking whether any federal laws were violated. The letter also went to the Justice Department.

Police last week would say only that the case remained “under active investigation.” Earlier this month, they said they were investigating the actions of activists as well as whether proper procedures were followed in disposal of the remains.

City health officials have not responded to The Post’s requests for comment.

District officials have said the city medical examiner has no plans to perform autopsies on the fetuses.

Handy and Bukovinac say they are returning to their regular routines. They protest in front of clinics, and now also in front of the mayor’s office, hoping to pressure officials for autopsies and to keep the story in public view. They said they are traumatized by what they saw; Bukovinac says she is having nightmares.

Among the most stressful things, Handy said, is the backlash they’ve faced from other antiabortion groups and leaders. The taking of remains, and then the distribution of fetal images at a news conference and on social media, proved divisive among abortion opponents.

“People who I’ve worked with for years, who have known me and supported my ministry — to see them turn their backs and become unbelievably inconsistent and call me horrible things,” she lamented.

Kuchinsky acknowledged the secretive Mass was odd and he said he examined his conscience. But he said he told himself, “The decision to bury the dead — I think it goes across all religious lines.”

Asked about what people who don’t believe life begins at conception might think, he said: “I’d hope the love that brought me to do this, and other people who had the remains, I would hope that would suffice to be enough. Certainly to end up in a landfill or incinerator, I would hope the families would be more happy with the care they were shown by us.”

“I commended them to the Lord our God as I know him,” Kuchinsky said. “But I didn’t intend any disrespect to anybody else’s religion. This was an act of love for us.”

Peter Hermann and Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.